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Frankincense comes from the Boswellia sacra tree, which grows mainly in the Horn of Africa. The number of trees that produce the fragrant resin could decline by 90 percent in the next 50 years.
scott.zona/flickr
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U.S. Says Details Of Flu Experiments Should Stay Secret

A chimpanzee eats a coconut at the Alamogordo Primate Facility at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., in an undated photo from the National Institutes of Health. A plan to move chimps that had retired to the facility after being subjects of medical experiments sparked controversy and a review of research policies.
AP
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Biomedical Research Using Chimps Curtailed

This image, from a sensor at the particle accelerator at CERN, is an example of the data signature a Higgs particle might generate. Researchers will spend 2012 sifting through data in an attempt to find the Higgs.
CERN
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Cagebreak! Rats Will Work To Free A Trapped Pal

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone — the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
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Scientists Worry About Impact Of Bird Flu Experiment

NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, seen in this artist's rendering, will use 8 pounds of plutonium-238 as its power supply. That's a significant portion of the remaining space fuel. NASA and the Department of Energy have offered to split the costs of producing the fuel, but Congress has so far opposed that arrangement.
NASA
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Fake Mission Accomplished For Mars500

A researcher who wrote a famous report about dead polar bears was asked to take a polygraph test by a federal agent who has been investigating allegations of scientific misconduct. Above, a polar bear rests with her cubs on pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska.

A museum employee stands beneath a mastodon skeleton on display at the U.S. National Museum, now the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, circa 1917. A new study revisits an old debate about the evidence for an early mastodon hunt in North America.

What Slew An Ancient Mastodon? DNA Tells Tale

A researcher who wrote a famous report about dead polar bears is being re-interviewed by federal investigators, who are continuing to probe allegations of misconduct. Above, a polar bear walks on the frozen tundra on the edge of Hudson Bay.